


'Coffee' is a Loosely Used Term

by SilverOwlCity



Series: We All Have Our Daemons [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Sibling Bonding, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 09:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14691690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverOwlCity/pseuds/SilverOwlCity
Summary: After the return of the former Avengers, Tony has retreated to his lab. In an (awful, ridiculous) attempt to get him to come out, the Tower's youngest residents mess with his precious coffee.Based on The Fake Redhead's prompt #29:"Can someone tell me why this coffee tastes like apples?"





	'Coffee' is a Loosely Used Term

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own the prompt, the idea of Daemons, or anything recognizable from the MCU.

After the return of the Avengers, Tony locked himself in his labs so he wouldn’t have to interact with them much. Of course, that also meant he didn’t leave the lab much, which was a bit disappointing. Chiara had just rolled her eyes from her perch above his suits. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to talk him out of this craziness.

It didn’t stop the younglings from trying to though.

Ariana had told FRIDAY to shut down the labs every night around midnight. Peter had taken it further and had the AI turn his coffee maker off from twenty-thirty to five-forty-five. Kerion and Lealah had just laughed at Chiara’s whining about how tired she was.

Bags were starting to form under the daemon’s eyes where they should not be. (Despite there being no reason to stay awake, her human couldn’t seem to fall asleep.) She felt absolutely drained and was starting to lose her patience with the man.

How they eventually got Tony out of the room was her idea – ruin his coffee.

At first, Harley had Dum-E mix in far more sugar than was necessary. His father had just ignored the overly sweet (read: disgusting) taste. He’d then moved onto adding creamer of different flavors to the coffee. Not even the flavors they knew would disgust him convinced him to leave the lab for actual, quality coffee. Changing the brew didn’t work. Neither did adding tea bags to the different flavors – a suggestion from Ilika, Bruce’s Pomeranian.

(His reaction to the sudden presence of heavy cinnamon with the hazelnut had elicited the best reaction by far. He’d spit the concoction over the counter where the coffee maker and sink were and proceeded to scrub his tongue with a napkin. Chiara had asked FRIDAY to save the video for later viewing.)

Eventually, it became more than just trying to get the man out of the lab. Now, it was a game of how gross Tony would let his favorite beverage become before he demanded someone fix it.

Nora gave Dum-E a gallon of whole milk mixed with honey and maple syrup. Tony had taken one sip and dumped the cup down the drain. Divali had the suggestion of melting different ice cream flavors and using them in place of creamer. For three weeks, there was a new flavored ‘creamer’ in the coffee. Then, he started refusing to drink anything that was a lighter shade of brown or had unidentifiable floating chunks in it – cookie dough had made the grossest looking coffee flavor they’d seen yet.

When Bruce found out what they were doing, he’d tried to guilt them into stopping. The three teens had laughed at him with their older sister grinning behind them.

“Don’t you see?” Nora had questioned. “He knows it’s a game – and he’s winning.”

At Bruce’s confused expression, Nora’s elk had rolled his eyes and gestured with his head at the screens.

“He doesn’t leave or try to make his own coffee – he just lets it happen to him. It’s like his bragging that we can’t beat him,” Divali huffed in mock annoyance.

“We _need_ to beat him. I refuse to let him win,” Harley and Motta had informed the scientist.

Bruce had sighed and rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Just don’t kill him, alright?”

The young Starks had agreed that they would not kill their father. (Purposely.)

They waited for a few days after the talk with Bruce before changing their tactics again.

They instructed Dum-E to replace the water in the coffee maker with different sodas. Sadly, their efforts were again fruitless as their father actually seemed to _like_ some of the soda-coffee mixes. Others only got as far as a wary sniff before the pot was gone. (After about two months of the game, Tony had started to send the weird combinations up to the Avengers’ common room. Watching Clint drink their concoctions was funnier than watching Tony drink them.)

When they were running out of ideas, Motta suggested putting juice in the coffee. Each day, Peter and Harley would choose different flavors and add them to the arsenal. Soon, they stopped with coffee and moved to mostly juice with coffee beans.

Chiara had been throwing in suggestions to get her human out of their lab. While she could travel anywhere in the Tower without pain, she didn’t trust Tony to take care of himself. She could feel (and see) how tired he was and the anxiety he felt about the returned Avengers. As much as she would love to avoid all confrontation with her former friends, she knew that it wasn’t healthy locking themselves away from the world like this.

She knew she was going to have to force the matter sooner or later.

A few days after they’d added juice to the hazelnut French vanilla coffee, they completely changed the game. (And, in doing so, won it.)

Tony had gotten used to finding a strange taste in his morning coffee since he’d locked himself down here around three and a half months ago. Sometimes, the brews weren’t half bad. Other times, he had to rely on the strength of the taste of the food Dum-E and Butterfingers managed to over-season for lunch to save his taste buds. But at the base of all the combinations was coffee.

There was always an undercurrent of the familiar bitterness that was reassuring.

He was expecting the same thing as he pulled himself up off the mattress in his lab. He lazily had FRIDAY run the coffee maker, briefly wondering what today’s flavor would be. Somehow, he managed to miss Chiara’s amusement through their bond.

Pulling up the new measurements, he set to work on constructing a suit for Divali. He’d created suits for all of his children to protect them in case of an emergency – like the incident at the mansion. Now, he was focused on creating suits to protect their daemons.

Absentmindedly, he reached over and took a sip from the mug Dum-E had handed him. He immediately turned and spit it out. “What the hell is this?”

Dum-E opened and closed his claw in a way that clearly meant he didn’t know. Tony had FRIDAY remake the pot and again got the disgusting taste of apple juice. He checked for the beans and found there were none. He looked through the cabinets in his makeshift kitchen and found no trace of his favorite beverage.

“FRIDAY, have someone send down a new bag of coffee.”

“ _No can do, Boss_ ,” the AI told him cheerfully. “ _I’ve been instructed to allow no one in or out of the lab if they aren’t you._ ”

He huffed, put off by FRIDAY’s amusement. “Well, override that.”

There was a few seconds of silence before the mechanical voice spoke again.

“ _No one is willing to come down to the lab to help you, Boss_.”

He groaned and prepared himself to leave. Dread filling his stomach, he dragged himself into the elevator and hit the button for the common room, hoping no one was up.

When the doors opened, he was greeted with the full team eating and goofing off in front of the television as some cartoon played. They stopped when they saw him, but he forced himself to ignore them and pretend he didn’t care. It was easier than he thought it would be.

He made his way to the kitchen and found his children laughing and throwing food to their daemons. All four fell into silence when they saw him.

“Can someone tell me why this coffee tastes like apples?” he demanded.

Ariana groaned. “Fri, I thought you were going to tell us when he woke up.”

“ _Must have slipped my mind_.”

“Sure it did,” Kerion said, rolled his eyes and stealing a piece of sausage from Peter’s plate.

The teen tried to grab the sausage back from his sister’s Wiemaraner. He missed and fell off his chair instead. The Daemons around him giggled in amusement.

“Can someone tell me why this coffee tastes like _apples_?” Tony repeated.

“Can you tell us why we haven’t seen you in four months?” Nora snarked back. Her father stuck his tongue out at her. “Very mature, Papa, _really_.”

“We wanted to get you back into the real world, Dad,” Ariana told him. “If replacing your bitter nectar with apple juice was the way to do so –” she shrugged indifferently “– so be it.”

The others nodded in agreement. “We know you don’t like your old team and we all have our problems with them. But we also know that hiding in your lab isn’t healthy. You need to talk to them – maybe not today or even tomorrow – maybe not even next week – but soon.”

Picking up from where his daemon left off, Harley continued, “And if you refuse, we’ll just replace everything Dum-E’s supposed to bring you with apple juice.”

“The bottom line,” Nora interrupted, “is we’re trying to help you in the weirdest possible way we can. You’re welcome. Now are you going to come willingly or do we have to do this whole thing again?”

Tony glared but grudgingly agreed to go with his children to see his once friends and be at least civil. His kids nodded before Harley turned back to the counter. He spun on his heel and smiled at his father. The boy held out a full coffee pot toward Tony.

“What’s in it?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Motta told him, somehow managing to smirk.

Carefully, he poured a mug and took a sip. It was bitter and strong and _absolutely disgusting_ but it was actual coffee. The taste made him hum with delight. He’d almost forgotten what actual coffee tasted like. The teens and daemons giggled at him. He smiled back at them.

Chiara was feeding contentment down their bond, causing her human to sigh happily. It’d been a while since he’d felt like this. He hadn’t realized just how much he missed this.

_You shouldn’t have stayed down there so long_ , his daemon’s voice echoed in his head. Tony turned to glare at her, but the owl was looking fondly at the arguing animals and children in front of her and her human.

Tony sighed. _Yeah,_ he chuckled as Peter threw a sausage at Harley and hit his hippo instead. _Yeah, I know_.


End file.
